Alibaba smashes its Single’s Day record once again as sales cross $25 billion

Alibaba has set another Single’s Day record after the e-commerce giant sold over $25 billion of product on the Chinese biggest online shopping date.

The full number comes in at 168.2 billion RMB, that’s roughly $25.3 billion, in GMV — that’s “gross merchandise volume” which is used to measure a dollar value for all sales on a platform. In Alibaba’s case, that predominantly means its Taobao marketplace and Tmall brand store although it does offer sales via its international services and it ships worldwide. All told, Alibaba handled 1.48 Billion transactions during the 24-hour period.

The year’s numbers also signal a return to growth for Single’s Day (11/11) sales, an important area that investors will look at and Alibaba needs to show progress on.

While the jump isn’t as much as the 60 percent Alibaba saw yearly from from 2013 to 2015, it is up on last year’s 32 percent which is impressive given the scale that the event has reached today and the growth that Alibaba’s business has seen since then.

The holiday began as a promotion for TMall started by current CEO Daniel Zhang, who was then in charge of the business unit, as a way to make single people feel less lonely, but it has since blossomed into the world’s largest single shopping date by some margin.

GMV is off the charts, but it is important to note that this is not revenue for Alibaba. The company makes money from e-commerce in two main ways. It charges a commission and ‘store fee’ to brands that are accepted to Tmall; Taobao doesn’t charge fees to merchants, it instead makes money by charging them for ads that boost their product/store visibility.

It’s important to note sales in RMB and USD due to varying exchange rates

Another important metric is mobile. Not only does a higher number mean that Alibaba is reaching new/newish internet users, but mobile users tend to be more engaged which is obviously an important goal.

This year, Alibaba said 90 percent of sales were made on mobile which is up on 82 percent for 2016 and 69 percent in 2015.